Devil's Triangle traffic plan hits snag

The Mills Fleet Farm store in Brooklyn Park sees 2,000 to 4,000 non-customers cut through its parking lot each day to avoid congestion from the Devil's Triangle highway reconstruction project. Last winter, a driver taking a shortcut struck and injured a Fleet Farm employee walking to his car.

The snarl is expected to grow worse this fall as work progresses on the Devil's Triangle, one of the region's busiest and messiest highway intersections, situated in the densely populated suburbs west and north of Minneapolis.

So Fleet Farm has agreed to pay $125,000 toward the construction of a half-mile connector road between 83rd and 85th avenues to route traffic around its store and frontage road. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) and the city would pick up the rest of the $400,000 tab -- a little over $135,000 each.

But last week, about 40 residents who live near the area objected to the road extension and persuaded the Brooklyn Park City Council to reject the plan on a 4-3 vote. The council discussed forming a study group, including residents, to consider extension alternatives, but that could take months, and by then the traffic snarl could grow much worse, city officials say.

Fleet Farm's frontage road, Lakeland Avenue, will be closed at 85th Avenue by October, said Kevin Larson, an assistant city engineer, and when that happens, even more traffic is expected to flow through the store's parking lot.

And the Devil's Triangle work -- which involves rebuilding the intersection of 85th Avenue, Hwy. 169 and County Road 81 -- isn't scheduled for completion until the fall of 2011.

Resident Coletta Lundeen said members of her homeowners association, Sunrise Court the Third, appealed to the council to safeguard children, prevent loss of home values, and head off the environmental impact from air and noise pollution in their quiet neighborhood.

"If it stays where it is [proposed], we don't want it," said Judy Middlemist, whose townhouse would be near the extension's curve. She said the estimated 3,000 to 5,000 vehicles a day that would use the new road "are not going to enhance our property value or our neighborhood at all."

But Mayor Steve Lampi said the half-mile extension is needed now because "a lot of traffic is cutting through Fleet Farm's parking lot." Lampi and council members Jeanette Meyer and Dean Heng voted at the council meeting to proceed with design work for the extension.

Many of the shortcut trips that drivers are making through the Fleet Farm lot are occurring during rush hour, between Lakeland Avenue and the Xylon Avenue traffic light on 85th Avenue, just east of Devil's Triangle. Drivers are trying to avoid long lines turning from westbound 85th Avenue onto southbound Hwy. 169, or from northbound Hwy. 169 onto eastbound 85th Avenue, officials said.

Fleet Farm's sweetened offer

Fleet Farm, which owns the 13-acre field behind the store, agreed to pay up to $125,000 of the cost. The company also offered at last Monday's City Council meeting to pay $10,000 for fences or other amenities to reduce the new road's impact on area townhouse and single-family residents, said company engineer Bruce Buxton.

"We all know the extension is coming," Lunde said. "At some point we need to let Fleet Farm develop their property."

The City Council has rejected several residential development proposals, including a road, since 2002 for Fleet Farm's commercially zoned 13 acres.

A study of extension alternatives could take six months, Lampi and Lunde said. If that happens, the city might lose MnDOT's contribution of about $136,000 for the extension road, said assistant city engineer Larson.

He said MnDOT agreed to cover asphalt paving of the extension if it could be done this year by its Devil's Triangle contractor as a project add-on. The city's share of the extension would be about $137,500, which would come from a special assessment construction fund.

Consultation with MnDOT

"We are looking at alternatives to resolve the problem because we don't want somebody getting hurt," Buxton said.